UNIT 32 CORRECTING LEARNERS

There are different ways in which we can organize our learners in the classroom. For example, learners can work on their own, as a whole class, in pairs, in teams, in groups. Organizing learners into different working patterns is what we mean by “grouping learners”.

Whole class activities enable students to practice the language at the same time; these help students increasing their  confidence, especially among shy or weaker learners.

Individual activities give students the opportunity to work at their own pace and to focus and organize their thoughts.

Pair and group activities supply students with opportunities for emerging longer turns and fluency through interaction.

We can let students sometimes to work in pairs, groups of three or four people and even large groups according to the number of students we have. We have to remember that if we do this kind of opportunities, we will have to mix the weaker students with the best ones, in that way they will learn from each other and in the end we will have good developed outcomes.

Roles given to each group will help managing the different tasks that students may have at the moment grouping. A teacher never has to put pressure on their students; we just have to monitor their activities letting the class flow go until they have finish.

UNIT 32 CORRECTING LEARNERS

As teachers one of the most difficult tasks that we have is to correct learner’s mistakes and that is because we don’t want to make our students to feel sad or embarrassed. There are many techniques in which we could make our student aware of the mistakes that they are making without hurting their feelings.

Finger correction: Is when we point to the word where the student is wrong, without saying a word.

Gestures: we can use this when we don’t want that our students get interrupted at the time that they are using the target language, we can use gestures to still make our students be aware of the slips they have committed.

Echo corrections. Is when we repeat certain utterances after the students have said something wrong.

We correct learners sometimes when they have made a mistake and we want to show them that something is wrong. There is a range of correction strategies and techniques we can use to indicate (show) that there is a mistake, and the ones we choose depend on a number of different factors, for example the aim of the activity, the age of the learners and the language level of the learners.

Keep on mid that over-correction can result in learners not wanting to say anything in class because they are afraid of making mistakes.